Tiny 1% Linux = Big Microsoft Terror
It's Better With Windows
"Windows helps you quickly and easily get online and connect to your devices and services-- without dealing with an unfamiliar environment or major compatibility issues."
The ads are pretty good, which means they must have been produced by Asus because Microsoft has never ever been able to produce a decent ad campaign. (I had nightmares over those pervy guys in big blue butterfly suits invading people's homes; that was beyond creepy.) The last one is unintentionally hilarious because it hypes "Windows Family Safety." Dad gets to be the hero here; he is actually home, though still unshaven and wrinkled, and he gets to protect young son from Internet evils with Family Safety From Windows Live One-Care. All Dad has to do is click some checkboxes, and son is safe. Hurrah!
Trusted. Familiar. Compatible. Quite true, since the Eee PC is running XP. I guess they won't say things like "Antiquated. Your familiar, friendly viruses and worms, and all the performance defects you've become accustomed to. For all of our billions we can't advance beyond an eight-year old operating system, or fix the darned thing."
It's a direct shot at Linux, so I guess that little bitty one percent is a bigger one percent than it's given credit for. Some have questioned if these ads are legitimate, and claim they are satire or a hoax. ASUS links to them, so they're for real.
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Yeah- I was thinking: "I wish I could use an antiquated OS with more viruses than a 3rd floor Amsterdam window lady. And while I'm at it, I wish I could type school book reports on a 83% keyboard while laying on a bed. I guess I'll just have to stick with my bleeding edge technology and ergonomic workstation.
Wasn't there a powerpoint slide from some presentation that Ballmer did a couple of months back that showed what MS believed the current international market installed OS share was, i.e. as opposed to the US-centric sales view most market share figures take? There were no numbers, and Ballmer was making the point that Windows biggest competition was pirated copies of Windows. What nobody else much seemed to pick up, and what Ballmer himself never mentioned, was that the Linux slice of the pie-chart he showed was almost as big as the Mac OSX slice, at what I would guess would be around 10% of the pie. And that's why they are so afraid.
Say what you will about Microsoft's other products, they truly do excel at creating FUD. They'll never grant anyone access to their code. They have developed an entourage of followers, fanboys and developers. But they remain the world's premier producer of fear, uncertainty and doubt. Word!
I kind of like to use Microsoft's own words: "In a world without walls .... who needs Windows?", of course I edited it to make sense.
More importantly, Microsoft are anti-competitively applying a tax to the 10% that reformat and install Linux.
This is a legal issue that must be furthered. In no other market could companies get away with such clear and blatant illegal behaviour.
Where can you E-mail Asus and tell them that you no longer will do business with them?
I don't care what Micro$oft does or does not do. I'm sticking with Linux. I am Linux!
Ms have way more to fear from OS X than crappy Open Office-based Linux. People dump Linux netbooks simply because OpenOffice is so bad. The Excel clone is particilary weak - even weaker than Office 2008 (which Microsoft have purposely not supported vs. 2007).
Wow, I would expect linux today to run a whois. Asus.co.uk isn't on the ASUS DNS servers -.- Its owned by a private UK citizen. Also, if you read the whole thing it is quite different from EVERY SINGLE OTHER AD ON ANY ASUS SITE. claims a 92% scale keyboard versus other ads which just call the keyboard "ergonomic". Anti-microsoft hate runs so high in the linux community it blinds you to basic common sense and skepticism. The ads are the only thing that even look remotely real, but HD camcorders and tripods are cheap.
Major Disappointment and fail at investigative journalism.
You haven't proven anything, Kelson. Vunet claims they verified that the site is legitimate:
The story has been prominent for several days now, and neither ASUS nor Microsoft have issued denials. It is mentioned on ASUS forums with no denials:
If it is a hoax, what's the point? It's very elaborate and there is no punchline. If you're going to call hatred and hoax, you need something more than WHOIS data, which in this case are not even close to a smoking gun.
Carla, I wondered if it might be a fake. So I did the whole whois stuff that others have mentioned, without much luck. Then I ran a few commands to download everything at the http://www.asus.co.uk domain. It turns out that the information page about the 1000HE (and its link to the Windows campaign) is the only original page at that site. Everything else redirects to http://uk.asus.com. At first I thought to myself, wow, it really must be fake. But who on earth would go to such great lengths for something that is to all intents and purposes an epic trolling moment? And now I see from your replies to others in this blog that Asus have confirmed that the campaign is real after all. This whole thing, frankly, is completely bizarre. What do you suppose is actually going on, here?
There may be quite some number of folks who are using a "Linux LiveCD" to "go online" and not a whole lot more.....
I have given a "live CD"to several friends, and a shoe loving absolutely no-tech daughter too, telling them to use the CD whenever they plan on doing nothing other than going online to browse/surf/what-ever, with a 2 minute explanation of how to boot into them and then go online in a safe and secure environment.
I would imagine there are others who have done this too....
Some guy, that is a good question. It could be a trial, a test to see if it's worth launching as a bigger campaign. It could be a big dumb blunder, which wouldn't be the first time Microsoft made a hash of a new ad campaign. Even though it appears on Asus' site, I bet that Microsoft is behind it because they are notorious for pushing Windows to the front of the line, no matter how it might damage their partners. It could be a rogue marketing person or team. If it does turn out to be a hoax I will laugh only if a very clever reason for it is revealed :)
Any copy is good copy. Its free advertising for ASUS.
whois itsbetterwithwindows.com - GoDaddy in the U.S. and some guy with a Hotmail account. The commercial is actually repetitive and I who thinks that Works is a great selling point. It does show 4 minutes worth of ASUS.
There isn't much from ASUS to make me think its legit.
It may be a Linux joke.
What a deal pretty laptops. Microsoft Works. Family Safe. Its kind of funny when you think about it.
The way that the logo is being used is probably illegal.
http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/gallery/ms-logos.mspx?FINISH=YES
So much for legit.
The funniest thing about the video is that the kids are using Microsoft Works for their homework..... the file formats of which are not compatible with ANYTHING, including Microsoft Office. Let's see how quickly they start crying when they cannot open that cute ppt or doc from their friends....
I'm surprised why Micro$soft didn't use something more appealing like "Get the facts"...
....whooops they already used that in the past...what did that help..?
Apart from raising FUD, and occasional laughs from people who knows better.
I'll stick with Linux, whenever I can, - which is on all computers apart from the kids PC (due to games) and my work-laptop (company rules/policies).
Maybe it is their having to drop the price of XP from about $50 to $5 and whatever other "tricks" they had to pull in order to "win" back the netbook market...
But I suspect that it has something to do with the % of those XP licenses on shiny new netbooks that have NEVER been activated or phoned home... (If they haven't "phoned home" to Redmond and they haven't been returned then what happened to them... Hint: I'm posting this from one of them...)
Hmm I almost bought a new asus netbook when I saw this crap. I've been trying to figure out if its real or not so i can either boycott asus or buy myself a sweet new netbook (had my eyes on a 1000he). The most convincing evidence that its real is this:
http://promotions.newegg.com/ASUS/041609/?cm_sp=Subcat_Netbooks-_-ASUS/041609-_-http%3a%2f%2fpromotions.newegg.com%2fASUS%2f041609%2f478x88.jpg
I'm going to wait about a week and see if I can find out for sure if this real or fake before buying anything. I can see how people would think its petty to boycott asus entirely over this, sure business is business and to the average user windows might be what they want. But its all about how they're presenting this propaganda. Are asus netbooks better with windows? The answer is... it depends on who you are and what you're using it for. For me, linux is much much better. I personally hate windows and microsoft with a fiery passion for a number of reasons. I also couldn't care less if someone wants to use windows but to launch a propaganda campaign buddying up with microsoft like this? Ugh. Its just disgusting.
Maybe we linux users are still a bit touchy after getting stabbed in the back by SCO but it seems to me they first come out supporting the idea of people choosing their own OS without the bias and lame smear campaign, then sell out to microsoft (probably for a large some of money) and join in their effort to screw the open source community. I hope I'm wrong because its really hard to find a netbook with a decent keyboard layout. Dell, unfortunately, is about the only other maker who has the control, tab, shift and tilde keys all in the correct places and that just drives me silly when they screw up the keyboard SILLY I tell you!
Asus has gone the full 90 on this which leads me to believe Microsoft are paying them for the privilege of putting their product on Asus hardware.
Fake Video!
That marketing video is completely fraudulent. There is NO WAY The video rendering of web pages is that fast from a click action on netbooks with windows.
With Ubuntu 9.04 you can get speeds close to that opening a second window in firefox.
well personaly i bought a asus n10jc-hv006 netbook its brilliant little netbook. in saying that i found the windows xp that was installed lacking so i removed it and installed mandriva linux instead and now i get much better performance - i must add i upgraded it to 2gb ram and 500gb sata hdd
and now my apps and gaming is even better runing wow on it is a lot smoother than it ever was in windows , the compressed 1024x768 resolution with the new nvidia drivers for windows xp is horrible..
I also hate windows for alot of reasons ,, but find what they are doing are wrong!
the chief of department of education here signed contract with M$ stating that any device used by edu department that has a capability to run windows operating system must have a license key purchased regardless of the fact that the servers run with linux, and a lot of the department use the google android phones.
just another monopoly,, But Asus netbooks are so much better with linux in my honest opinion.
Windows is the best, i think
I still like Linux because its source is open so I could learn a lot of things
I don't care a about its freedom because windows price is not too expensive